Mobile Trounces Desktop Media Consumption

According to comScore, smartphones and tablets accounted for 60 percent of total digital media time spent in May.

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Mobile usage is leaving the desktop in the dust, according to new stats from comScore.

Smartphones and tablets accounted for 60 percent of total digital media time spent in Mayup from 50 percent a year ago. What's more, mobile app usage has surpassed all other digital media consumption, coming in at a peak 51 percent.

No one is really surprised by these stats. Let's face it: When was the last time you loaded up an Angry Birds game on your desktop? Or typed an email or IM on a physical keyboard? Most of us check social media on the go, pass the train commute with mobile games, and send short texts from a restaurant.

And it's those practices that have helped push the leading content categoriesthose with at least 10 billion minutes of total engagement in Mayso far into the mobile sector.

"Amazingly, but perhaps not altogether unexpectedly, a couple of important categories have shifted almost exclusively to mobile," Andrew Lipsman, vice president of marketing at comScore, wrote in a blog post.

The digital radio and photo categories both generate 95 percent of their usage from mobile devices, led by services like Pandora, Instagram, and Flickr. Maps and instant messengers, like WhatsApp or Viber, claim at least 90 percent of time on mobile.

And while all of the categories on comScore's list reach at least 65 percent of users via a smartphone or tablet, some are moving a little slower than others.

Social networking, for example, is still accessed on the desktop by 29 percent of users, but 71 percent are using mobile.

"When considering the category's contribution to total digital ad spending, its rapid shift to mobile marks an important sign of the times for the Internet economy," Lipsman said.

And that economy relies heavily on advertisers, who must keep up with the rapid movement toward mobile. In an effort to help smooth the transition, comScore teased several new innovations for media companies and marketers to improve the monetization of mobile ads.

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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